Stupendous Comics (Now a division of Agglomerated Mega-Publishing)

Stupendous Comics is one of the many independent comics lines that erupted in the 1980's. Until that point the American Comics field was dominated by three companies—DC, with its large cast of classic character, Marvel with the fictional characters it created to capitalize on the public interest with the Variant emergence, and Quake, which emerged from the LA counter culture markets to the mainstream with its licenses of real variants (the Aquarians and the Flower Children) in the late 60's early 70's, and now cornered the market in comics about real variant heroes—who maintained strict controls of their copyrights, licenses and profits. The 80's saw a boom in independent publishers who focused on new and creative stories and creator ownership of materials. Stupendous Comics was one of the more successful of these ventures, mostly due to the efforts of some brilliant creators.
    In January of 1987 Stupendous Comics 'sold out'—facing mounting financial pressures due to market extenuation, the company let itself get purchased by the publishing arm of Agglomerated Mega Corp. The deal was equitable and made the editors and publishers rich, but did not sit well with the creative staff, who feared that AMC would try and wrest copyright from them. Instead AMC wanted the brand name, their distribution network and Stupendous' comics well organized editorial staff in their own forays into this increasingly lucrative market sector. Instead of seeing their creator owned properties being stolen, the creative staff is finding that very little of AMC's vaunted capitol is going to publicize their books—AMC is starting a line of new books based either on real-world licenses or new character for whom it holds the copyright. They are going to keep the other books running as long as they turn a reasonable profit, but their eventual goal is phasing all of them out in favor of corporate owned characters. The rights holding creators will be shown the door with a hearty wave and hopefully good feelings all 'round—especially if they can be enticed to work on AMC books later.
    Some of the creators have already left—writer-artist David Adder has taken his popular book Millennium and started self publishing it under the 4 Winds imprint. This comes as no great surprise, since Adder was already self-publishing a quarterly magazine of and about comic books called Powered. He is rumored to be starting a spin off title of Millennium within the year. According to industry buzz the book will be written and Drawn by Adder's former inker, Harvey Dann, and will be set in New York.
    Lacking Adder's pre-existing distribution network and/or name recognition, other creators are staying with Stupendous Comics, and make up the core of Stupendous' line (at least until more AMC owned properties come through the pipeline). These books are:

The Tempest (written by Ryan Bridges, Drawn by Jason Kirkpatrick)
This is the story of a group of runaway 'metahumans' created by a company called the Tempest Corporation. While originally it seemed as if the book was going to be yet another 'heroes on the run' style story, the creative team delights in building up expectations and then yanking the rug out from under the reader with sudden revelations and mind-boggling scale shifts. While it originally made a name for itself with its willingness to use violence and sex in what is often considered to be a children's media, The Tempest has proven recently to be more than just a shock book or an extended cliche over the 2 years of it's run, which is improving its sales considerably. The creators claim that they have an 8 year agenda for the book. This is a main selling point—not just because of the solid continuity, but because of the belief that the creators can actually EXPLAIN everything that has occurred in the first quarter of the book with events rest.

Amalgam Hall (Bridges, Kirkpatrick and others)
A total divergence from their work on The Tempest, Amalgam Hall is a comedy book about the lives of a group of college students at a fictitious University in New England (which is assumed to be the University of Connecticut, Lancaster University or Dartmouth, depending on who you ask). The book is by turns sweet and funny, and has a devoted following. Bridges and Kirkpatric have opened up the characters for other creators to play with (though only the events that they write are considered gospel) and as many as 8 pages an issue are by other creators telling stories with the characters, most noticeably Lynn Wood, (known primarily for her 'Stickman' strip) regarded by many to the third 'creator' of Amalgam Hall. While the following is devoted, it is also small, and might be the first thing to vanish under AMC's control of purse strings.

The Young Earth (Written by Robert Thompson, drawn by various)
A series of three different super-hero comics set in the same world, the Protectors, the Guardians and the Legends are all the work of one talented author, Robert Thompson. The books are difficulty to describe, but detail a world where variance erupted in bloody wars the early 80's after having remained hidden for 20 years. The books come out simultaneously but deal with different teams and different time frames, making things difficult for a new reader but a trap for anyone who spends the time to figure out what's going on. The sub-plots and multiple timelines are a web that keeps readers coming back three weeks a month. Thompson acknowledges that for the most part he's making it up as he goes along, which can lead to repeated themes and weaker stories, but the book is very good overall. The multiple series were a cornerstone of Stupendous Comics when the company appeared in 1982, and Thompson no doubt made a lot of money in the buy-out, making it unlikely the Young Earth will leave any time soon.

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